National identity, willingness to fight, and collective action
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221099058 |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
National identity, willingness to fight,
and collective action
Austin Horng-En Wang
Department of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Nadia Eldemerdash
Department of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Abstract
Why do people risk their lives fighting in wars? This article looks beyond group grievance and material benefits to add
another psychological mechanism explaining why people choose to fight or not to fight – perceived collective action.
An individual is much more likely to fight when they perceive that others will also fight. Contrary to the expectations
of social identity theory and social pressure theory, the effect of perceived collective action is stronger among those
who have a weaker national identity because they are more likely to rationally calculate the chance of winning by
accounting for others’ decisions. To mitigate the endogeneity in post-conflict cross-sectional surveys, we conduct a
survey experiment (n ¼1,001) in Taiwan manipulating perceptions of others’ willingness to fight in a potential
China–Taiwan military conflict. Experimental evidence supports the hypotheses that perceived collective action
works only on weak Taiwanese identifiers. The result holds in robustness checks and in another nationally repre-
sentative survey.
Keywords
China politics, civil war, collective action, nation-building, social identity theory, survey experiment
Introduction
Why are people willing to risk their lives fighting in a
war? Understanding individual-level motivations to
high-risk collective action, such as fighting for the weaker
side in an asymmetric war, represents a significant strand
in the literature on interstate and civil conflict. Following
Collier & Hoeffler’s (1998, 2004) well-known greed vs.
grievance argument, much of this literature has focused
on rebels’ economic motivations and identity-based
grievances in pursuing this seemingly irrational action
(Collier, Hoeffler & Rohner, 2009). For example,
Humphreys & Weinstein (2008) point to individual
poverty as a driver of war participation, while Kalyvas
& Kocher (2011) show that participants benefit from
the protection of the rebel group, which motivates their
participation. Tezcu
¨r (2016: 248) finds that Kurdish
rebels in Turkey are motivated by a sense of ‘collective
identity threat’ gained through political activism.
In this article, we look at a sociopsychological motiva-
tion that forms a key component of the concept of col-
lective action: the relationship of the individual to the
collective. Examining collective action at the individual
level employs the assumption that individuals will
behave in the same way whether they are alone or in a
group. However, Olson’s (1965) work challenges this
assumption and demonstrates its fallibility. Instead, indi-
viduals examine the actions of the collective, for example
protest, and rationally choose to free ride whenever they
are not pivotal. That choice is derived from perceptions
of others’ actions. Similarly, social psychology research
has found much evidence that people behave differently
when they are with others (Zajonc, 1965), and political
science research has shown that people in dictatorships
Corresponding author:
austin.wang@unlv.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2023, Vol. 60(5) 745–759
ªThe Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433221099058
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